Early days I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an engineer, so I took subjects that I enjoyed – sciences and maths, to be honest I didn’t enjoy maths and I found it even more difficult when I didn’t put the time into studying it (put the time in now and it becomes much easier), but I felt it was fundamental to logical thinking. It was only later on in my studies, at university I learned the practical application of the subject.

In school I was always interested in Science, because I hated memorising texts and numbers but I really enjoyed spending my time solving problems and thinking about how things work. At the beginning, I was terrible at maths and physics but suddenly I had a great teacher that made me really understand the basic principles. Since then I loved it and keep studying those subjects.

I ended up studying Technology, Maths, Chemistry (my favourite), Physics and Technical Drawing. I never studied biology but I would have loved it.

Once I got to university all of these subjects made a lot of sense and made really good use of what I learnt.

I fell into becoming an engineer, and I’m a tissue engineer if you want to call it that, but I always wanted to be a biologist/biochemist, so in school I studied Maths (at As level), Biology, Physics and Chemistry (at A Level).

I didn’t do too well, but did get into university and then continued my studies, getting a 2:1 degree in Biomedical Sciences..then worked for a few years in industry for a biotechnology company in Cardiff, and now a few years into my PhD at Cardiff University 🙂

I hadn’t a clue what i wanted to be when i took my GCSE’s, i just knew i liked science. For A-Level i still had a liking for science and took Chemistry, Maths, Physics and originally geography but i swapped to business studies.

I originally applied to medicine but didn’t get accepted and ended up doing Biomedical Science at university. I felt i wanted to have a degree with more emphasis on applying a theory rather than remembering facts. This let me to swap to Biomedical Engineering. So, even if you don’t know what to do to start with, it’s never too late to swap and get yourself on the right track!

Like many of the other engineers I hadn’t always known that I wanted to follow this career path. I’ve always enjoyed logical subjects like sciences and maths but for GCSE I also did practical subjects like PE and Resistant Materials (Design and Technology).

For A-levels I did:
Economics, Maths, and Physics

And as extra As-levels I did:
Further Maths and Chemistry

Looking back I wish I’d also taken Biology as how our bodies work is simply amazing! As engineers I also think we have a lot to learn from how our bodies work. For example bone is a super impressive material, it’s really strong and has an ability to repair itself!